Paul Singer

Bio:

Paul Singer is an investigative reporter for Roll Call, a position he has held since February 2007. His coverage areas include: lobbying, fundraising and money in politics; ethics rules; personal finances of Members of Congress; and allegations of malfeasance. He has written extensively about Members funneling federal money to their personal interests, misusing their official accounts and supporting legislation closely tied to their friends, family and/or political supporters.
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Prior to joining Roll Call, Singer was the executive branch correspondent for National Journal. He spent most of 2006 covering the government's response to Hurricane Katrina and investigated the distribution of more than $100 billion dollars of hurricane relief money approved by Congress.
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In prior incarnations, Singer has served as head of the Cleveland Bureau of the Associated Press, where he covered the corruption trial of then-Rep. Jim Traficant (D-Ohio), and as White House Correspondent for United Press International. In 2000, working for UPI, Singer traveled extensively with the campaign of Vice President Al Gore, and covered the disputed presidential election returns from a Tallahassee motel room.
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Singer also teaches journalism in the master's program in Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies.

With Florida at the center of the Republican presidential campaign this week, its Cuban-American Senator took to the airwaves to accuse President Barack Obama of trying to make America “like the countries people come here to get away from.”

Republicans appear to have owned the morning news cycle in 2011. If you were watching the major Sunday morning talk shows last year, your odds of seeing a Republican Member of Congress in the guest chair were far greater than seeing a Democratic Member of Congress.

In May 2010, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to a podium in the Capitol to introduce a half-dozen economic experts she had convened for a meeting on how to jump-start the economy. What Pelosi did not mention is that one of them was her son's boss and a partner with her husband in more than a half-dozen investments.

It is an interesting but misleading statistic: The total net worth of Congress rose by about 25 percent during the past two years, but the net worth of female Members of Congress declined by more than 20 percent over the same period. Blame Jane Harman.

Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total, according to a Roll Call analysis of Members' financial disclosure forms.

Last weeks release of FBI documents finally put in writing what nobody had ever said on the record: The FBI suspected that former Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and lobbyists close to him were running a scheme to funnel earmarks to sham companies and nonprofits to benefit the lawmakers friends and former staffers.

Last week, the U.S. Coast Guard took the unusual step of withdrawing a final rule on life jackets that it had published in March, citing as the sole reason for its reversal a critical letter from a Florida woman who was not lobbying on behalf of anybody.

This spring, four House Republicans used money from their Congressional office accounts to send five staff members to a training seminar run by a conservative Christian group in Indiana that is leading the charge in the state for an amendment to ban gay marriage.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who announced last week that she is running for president, has gone from a little-known freshman Member in 2007 to a major conservative figure in part because she has strategically used her campaign, political action committee and Congressional office to build a national following.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) saw the reported value of his personal assets nearly double last year, and the only thing that may prevent him from claiming the title as the richest Member of Congress is $75 million in loans he secured in 2010.

As Minority Leader, John Boehner had received a direct payment of $833 each month from taxpayers to cover official expenses for leaders, the same monthly total then-Majority Leader Steny Hoyer received. But Boehner now receives a monthly $2,083.33 direct payment for expenses, according to the most recent expenditure reports from the Clerk of the House.

The website of the Enrichment Center asks, "Are you a Tranquil Turtle who is becoming exceedingly frustrated with a Much Loved Monkey?" Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) was apparently curious  last fall, his office paid the Enrichment Center $20,000 for "training."

Gary Bass is getting the band back together. In the midst of the last Republican revolution in the mid-1990s, the founder of the advocacy group OMB Watch convened a group of safety, health and environmental advocates to join forces and oppose efforts by the GOP Congress to cut federal regulations. This spring, Bass is at it again.

The New York newspaper publisher who organized an annual Caribbean conference attended by some members of the Congressional Black Caucus pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to Congress about how the 2007 trip was financed.

Congress is on a cost-cutting spree, looking for any place to trim the federal budget, but one line item appears safe: the $235,000 allocated each year for expense accounts for top leaders of each chamber.

John Boehner famously grew up mopping the floors of his fathers bar, so presumably he knows little about hobnobbing with foreign royalty, one of his duties as Speaker. So in December, the Ohio Republicans office spent $5,800 to register a staff member for a May protocol class.

Attendees at the January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas may have been confused when they ran into Darrell Issa: Were they meeting the California Republican Congressman and new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee? Or were they meeting the board member of a private company Issa founded called DEI Holdings Inc.?

In mid-February, videos posted by Rep. Darrell Issas staff on the YouTube page of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee contained a production credit for DEI Productions instead of the Oversight Productions moniker his office had used on other videos. It may be a simple case of cross-posting videos, but the personal branding extends deeply into Issas personal history and wealth.

Members of Congress love to promote domestic companies by adding Buy American provisions to legislation. But as Rep. Bruce Braley discovered this week, it is not as easy as it would seem to require the government to buy U.S. products.